Imaging the rupture process of the 10 january 2018 mw7.5 swan island, honduras earthquake

Abstract

The 10 January 2018 MW7.5 Swan island, Honduras earthquake occurred on the Swan island fault, which is a transform plate boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. Here we back-project the rupture process of the earthquake using dense seismic stations in Alaska, and find that the earthquake ruptured at least three faults (three stages) for a duration of ~40 s. The rupture speed for the longest fault (stage 3) is as fast as 5 km/s, which is much faster than the local shear wave velocity of ~4 km/s. Supershear rupture was incidentally observed on long and straight strike-slip faults. This study shows a supershear rupture that occured on a strike-slip fault with moderate length, implying that supershear rupture might commonly occur on large strike-slip earthquakes. The common occurrence of supershear rupture on strike-slip earthquakes will challenge present understanding of crack physics, as well as strong ground motion evaluation in earthquake engineering.